History of the Herk: Countless missions completed

The aeronautics company Lockheed-Martin claims there’s a C-130 Hercules in the air somewhere in the world every minute of every day.

Given the dozens of Hercules variants that have been produced since the end of the Korean War, the claim is hardly a stretch.

In the wake of that conflict it was evident the American military’s fleet of transport aircraft wasn’t ideally suited for modern warfare. The C-46 Commando, C-47 Skytrain and C-119 all had limitations. Enter the Herk.

Its four turboprop engines provided the power to fly at higher altitudes, while a stronger airframe addressed the pressurization issues that arose at those altitudes. And since its creation, the C-130H has fit the bill in multiple scenarios.

The aircraft have been flown into the center of hurricanes for decades now, as part of the Air Force Reserve Command’s weather reconnaissance squadron, without a single crash. They’ve delivered supplies to Antarctica and Greenland. They fought wildfires in the West until a crash from stress grounded the fleet in 2004.

In addition to its many humanitarian missions, the Hercules has filled countless military roles over the years as well, with its gunship version, the AC-130, having taken part in virtually every U.S. combat scenario since the Vietnam War.

During that conflict, the Hercules was modified into a gunship, and took out 10,000 enemy trucks. In recent years, the U.S. Marine Corps even fitted its KC-130J tankers with missiles to take out targets on the ground.